1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of enabling a wireless information device to access the Presence information of several entities. ‘Presence’ information refers to private user data which gives information and hints about the current state of a user of a wireless information device, including location, availability and mood. The term ‘wireless information device’ used in this patent specification should be expansively construed to cover any kind of device with one or two way communications capabilities and includes without limitation radio telephones, smart phones, communicators, personal computers, computers and application specific devices. It includes devices able to communicate in any manner over any kind of network, such as GSM or UMTS mobile radio, Bluetooth™, Internet etc.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Current generation wired and wireless telephones can indicate to a caller the status of a call recipient in only crude and potentially ambiguous terms: for example, when a caller makes a voice call, he or she might receive one of five different responses: (a) the desired call recipient answers; (b) there is no answer; (c) there is an engaged tone; (d) the call gets put through to a pre-recorded voice mail message or (e) the call gets diverted to someone else. If the intended call recipient does not actually answer the call, then the caller has no idea why the call was not answered: for example, is the intended recipient in fact there but too busy to answer? Could a different number have been dialled to connect successfully?
Conventional so-called ‘Presence’ systems are the subject of considerable interest at present and partly solve the above problems. The intent of Presence systems is to show the status of the prospective call recipient to a calling party ahead of the caller making the call—for example, giving information about whether the intended call recipient is busy, in a meeting, contactable on a mobile phone or land line, giving hints about the way the call recipient would prefer to be contacted (voice, SMS etc). Reference may be made to RFC 2778 ‘A Model for Presence and Instant Messaging’ February 2000, The Internet Society.
Presence information will typically be stored on one or more servers controlled by a wireless operator; people can post their Presence information onto these servers directly from their own wireless information devices; some kinds of Presence information may also be determined automatically, such as the location of the device. Someone seeking Presence information relating to (or ‘owned’) by another can access these servers. Peer to peer variants are also possible, with an individual storing his or her Presence information on his or her own wireless information device, which can give access to that information to other wireless information device or servers that wish to pull down this information. Reference may be made to PCT/GB01/03784 filed by the present applicant, which describes a comprehensive Presence architecture and is incorporated by reference into this disclosure. Further reference may also be made to PCT/GB01/03804 again filed by Symbian Limited, which discloses an extensible database architecture suitable for the fast and efficient deployment of Presence related systems and is again incorporated by reference into this disclosure.
Presence information can potentially be very useful in social situations, such as where an individual simply feels like talking to a friend: he can then manually and sequentially query the Presence information of his friends and avoid those who have posted Presence information such as ‘In a meeting’ or ‘Don't Disturb’. Querying another's Presence information will typically be done through a simple dialog screen, for example on the contacts application running on the wireless information device of the above individual, there could be a menu listing different communications options that can be initiated when a particular person's contact record is being viewed—e.g. ‘call’ (to place a voice call to that person); ‘message’ (to write and send a SMS text message to that person); and ‘Get Presence’ (to obtain the Presence information of that person). Using the ‘Get Presence’ option separately for each person in turn that he might like to talk to, he perhaps finds a friend who has posted the Presence information ‘Bored’ and he can then initiate a voice call with that person. The process of sequentially and manually checking Presence information is however quite slow.